I am becoming a smug dancer with the Rockyettes, Colorado’s version of the Rockettes in New York.
The dance steps are starting to sink into my shrinking Parkinson’s brain. I develop elaborate three-column spreadsheets with the first column containing lyrics, the second column with my written description of the dance steps, and the third column with clip art as a visual cue. For example, the dance step “chasse” reminds me of a galloping horse, and I use it as my clip art. This is a problem when I can’t remember in which direction the horse should be galloping.
Other dancers and I develop our own nicknames to remember the dance steps. For example, we rename dance steps as the teeter-totter, the mix master (I think I’m revealing my age on this one), and shaking the laundry.
Even my struggle with the sequence of the dance steps improves when I bombard my brain using all my senses (except the sense of smell, which has become nonexistent since Parkinson’s).
I am becoming a multi-tasker, simultaneously dancing and smiling, dancing while breathing, dancing while focusing on being in the present while trying to remember what step follows in the near future and dancing while observing members of the audience who are sleeping.
Every night before bed, I rehearse in my head the sequence of the steps of the dance routines. I’m becoming obsessed. Fellow dancers say that I have too much time on my hands, and/or I'm becoming a nut case.
When it’s performance time at the assisted living and retirement facilities, I feel prepared with a positive edge of excitement. I’m ready except that my carefully-made plans have to be set aside to accommodate the changes necessary in today’s performance. We must dance along a diagonal instead of straight line in order to be seen by the audience. We change our costumes, a different one for each song, in the hallway while the seniors sit in their wheelchairs watching the soaps and the dancers dress and undress (not to worry, we are covered by long-sleeved leotards and tights under our costumes). We need to rearrange our dance groups because one of the dancers is sick and isn’t able to perform. Because of the layout of the room, we need to enter and exit on stage left instead of stage right (it’s not really a stage, but a taped area on a slippery linoleum floor).
I hate when that happens. I hate dancing on a diagonal line on a slippery linoleum floor and entering and exiting on stage (or floor) left. But I must learn to embrace change.
While chatting with the folks in the audience after the performance, I melt when an elderly man takes my hand and kisses the back of it, thanking me with “You are an angel.”
Bring on the change. I’m ready to embrace it.
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